Running the day
On Monday 17 November, the first day of Enterprise Week, a secret brief will be revealed on this website. Students in schools and colleges across the country will work in teams of 4-6 to develop new and innovative ideas in response to this brief.What do I need to provide?
• A space for students to work for the day
• A computer with access to the internet (computer access is not required for the whole day so you can rotate sessions between teams if you have more than one)
• A supply of general stationery
• A calculator
The Make Your Mark Challenge aims to be student-led. Tutors and external people can be brought in to help the teams but this should be in a facilitation role, to support and motivate, not instruct or direct. Older students or representatives from local businesses make good facilitators and judges as they are further along the enterprise journey and can offer the benefit of their experiences.
Information on what facilitation can bring to the competition for students and a brief for facilitators.
Warm-up exercises
Revealing the brief to your students
A PowerPoint slide, Word document, and video clip revealing the Make your Mark Challenge brief will be available from the website on Monday 17 November.
What should the teams produce?
When the Make Your Mark Challenge brief is launched on Monday 17 November, students will be asked to create the following items:- Ideas sheet: One side of A4 describing the idea. Be as creative as you like, it can be typed or contain images and diagrams (suggested format: Word).
- Competitors’ outline: One side of A4 identifying the target market, the competitors and demonstrating the unique selling point of their idea (suggested format: Word).
- Money matters: Maximum of two sides of A4 including the estimated costs and profit, showing justification for the figures drawn from research. This can be shown in many ways as judges are aware that students will have different levels of financial skills (suggested format(s): Word and/or Excel).
Selecting your winning team
If you have more than one team taking part in an age category for the Make Your Mark Challenge, you will need to select an overall winner to represent your school or college.
Selling the idea: Teams must pitch their idea to a panel of judges, these can be either older students or staff, or you could invite local business people to choose your winning team. Judges should look for innovation, creativity and enterprise.